Kvale & Brinkmann (2009) assert that interviews are best suited for studying peoples understanding and also for clarifying and elaborating their own perspective of their lived world. As a result, qualitative interviewing was chosen because it would help me probe and clarify school leaders’ perception of inclusion and find out more about the way they motivate teachers to build inclusive classrooms. Interviewing is also appropriate as it helps to elicit information on some of the activities that the school leaders had practiced in the past and which are impossible to replicate (Merriam, 2009). Given the time span for the study, the face to face interview was also seen to be invaluable as it allowed direct contact (Thomas, 2009) and the eliciting of relevant information from the school leaders.
3.3.1 Interview structure
When designing the interview, it was important to make informed and reflective decisions about the interview method to use at different stages of the study (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Keeping in mind the kind of data that was needed from the interviews (Merriam, 2009), it was decided that both structured and unstructured interviews were going to be used. The first part of the interview was more structured to gather some background information about the school leaders, for example, their work experience, knowledge of inclusive education and school context. The second part of the interview was more semi-structured, thus allowing flexibility to focus more on the experiences or practices of the school leaders.
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3.3.2 Interview Guide and Pilot study
An interview guide was used to guide the interview rather than to dictate the structure and content (Thomas, 2009). Thus, it allowed the interview to remain focused and at the same time flexible enough to allow the interview to change direction when needed. The first interview guide was formulated from theories that were found in the literature review. These theories were used as a point of reference as it provided relevant information regarding how questions could be formulated to answer the research problem. Guiding questions were placed under each sub-question to ensure that issues pertaining to each sub-question were covered (refer to appendix 1). After the pilot interview, questions were reviewed and amendments were made according to the participant’s responses and recommendations.
Changes encompassed the inclusion of two more questions which related to assessment of teachers competence and a question which was directed at how school leaders help incompetent teachers. The pilot interview also helped to weed out poor questions such as How do school leaders implement support programs to ensure that classroom teachers build the competency to create inclusive classrooms? as it was too long. Since piloting of the interview was conducted on the same day as the first interview, recommendations and adjustment of the interview guide were carried out in haste.
This process has not only highlighted the importance of conducting a pilot study but that the pilot study could have been held at least a few days before the first interview to allow for thorough planning. I could also have had more than one pilot study so that I could have practiced my interviewing skills. Nevertheless, the first interview was productive as the school leader had a lot to share.
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3.3.3 The interview process
The introductions of the interviews were the same for all the three leaders. Each interview began with an introduction of the research problem and purpose of the research. Secondly, ethical issues were discussed such as the use of pseudo names, maintaining confidentiality of their school when describing its context, safe keeping of interview transcripts and the school leaders ability to withdraw from the interview if they wanted to. Then the school leaders were given the informed consent form, which they read and signed. They were also given time to ask any question regarding the interview.
The first interview was very helpful as Ms. Sally had a lot to say and therefore dictated the flow of the interview. Her answers helped to define follow up questions and confirmed the kind of questions that could be asked for later interviews. My part was to clarify, prompt and revisit what she had said. At the end of the interview, she pointed out that the interview was also a process of self-reflection as it provoked her thinking about the next step she needed to take to build her teachers competence.
Through consultation with the supervisor, changes made to the first interview guide also led to the restructuring of the interview main question and sub-questions. The first set of
questions were:
Main Question: How do school leaders build classroom teachers competence in creating inclusive classrooms?
Sub-Question 1: What are school leader’s philosophies about inclusive education?
Question 2: How do school leaders believe they can build classroom teachers competency in creating inclusive classrooms? And
25 Sub-Question 3: What strategies do school leaders use to build classroom teachers
competence in creating inclusive classrooms?
The new set of questions included:
Main Question: How do school leaders motivate teachers to build inclusive classrooms?
Sub-question 1 : To what extent do school leaders see the importance of inclusive learning?
Sub –question 2 : How do school leaders promote inclusive schooling?
Sub-question 3 : What competency building strategies do school leaders use to motivate teacher learning?
The main research question was slightly changed as it was observed that school leaders do not build teachers learning, however, they facilitated teachers learning by putting in place
strategies to help teachers learn. Changes made to sub-questions 1 and 2 were in response to the first school leaders interview answers. As mentioned earlier, Ms. Sallys’ responses to the first interview led to the formation of new questions that would be relevant to later interviews.
After transcribing the first interview, the interview guide was further scrutinized and adjusted to accommodate emerging concepts. For instance, questions were more specific and focused and were aimed at theories and other concepts which emerged out of the first interview, for example, coaching, short courses, university studies, how do school leaders encourage teachers to further their studies and working with the school administration. As a result, the interview guide was improved by inserting more keywords to guide the interview (refer to appendix 2). As a result, the second interview gathered more information than the first interview. At the same time, the second interview turned out to be more structured as questions were aimed at eliciting what was wanted from the interviewee rather than through prompting and probing of answers that were provided by the school leader. For example,
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instead of probing Ms. Richard about school based courses, she was asked about whether her teachers were attending university courses instead. It was obvious that she had more to say, however, my desire to get my own questions answered got in the way.
Upon reflections on the first two interviews, more emphasis was placed on probing. Therefore, using the same interview guide, more probing was carried out in the third interview. As a result, it turned out to have more depth. During this process, several lessons were learnt. First, engaging my supervisor from the initial planning of the interview guide and the piloting phase of the interview would have produced a more thorough interview guide. Second, the use of ‘probing’ during the interview would have guaranteed more rich data. Third, the constant changing of the interview guide led to eliciting of more information from one school leader than another. In spite of the drawbacks, the processes used to improve the interview guide have helped strengthen the validity of the research findings as questions did not only focus on theories but also on emerging concepts.
3.3.4 Recording and transcribing
Merriam (2009) and Kvale (1996) explain three basic ways of recording interviews. They are: audio recording (digital/cassette or video), note-taking and recording data as soon after the interview. For the purpose of this interview, audio recording was used to capture the precise words of the interview participants. Audio recording also ensured that everything spoken during the interview was available for analysis. From the outset, it was recognized that not all data was going to be used; therefore, each interview was replayed twice to familiarize myself with the data. As a result, irrelevant data, such as the school leader’s stories which did not relate to the research interest and disputes that happened due to misunderstanding of inclusive education concept, were not transcribed. During this process care was also taken so that
27 potentially valuable information was not lost. Reference was made to Merriam (2009) who stated that a segment or unit ought to satisfy the following two criteria: i) It should reveal information that is relevant to the study; ii) It could be the smallest part of information about something that can stand on its own. This means that it should be interpretable in the absence of any other information other than broad understanding of the context in which the enquiry was carried out.
Considerations were also given to how much of the interview transcript could be used as evidence and to the things that school leaders omitted and which could be regarded as important. (Thomas, 2009). For example, why did one of the school leaders only send competent teachers to attend courses?